Category: Open Source (Page 1 of 2)

H5P in Google Classroom

October 12, 2023 / Troy / 0 Comments

I’ve been a proponent of H5P. H5P creates interactive activities. I’ve long used it within Moodle to create activities for students to utilize. H5P is open-source. This means that I don’t have to worry about them switching to a paid model and losing all of my material.

H5P has a wide variety of interactive tools. These include Interactive Videos, Flashcards, Dictation Activities, Speak the Word, and much, much more.

However, most teachers only use Google Classroom. Google Classroom is “easy” to use. It also doesn’t do much.

While I have mostly used H5P in Moodle, I have used Lumi as well. Lumi is a stand-alone H5P creation and editing tool. You can download the full application (Mac, Windows, or Linux), so that you own and control all of the data and information. You can use their cloud version as well.

While I was using Lumi, I realized that it will export activities as a web page. Hm. If it’s a web page, one could put the link in Google Classroom. I created an activity, exported that activity to a web page, uploaded the web page to Google Drive, and then linked it in Google Classroom.

Guess what? Google removed the ability to serve web pages from Google Drive, so one still needs to find a place to host the activity. Lumi still makes it easy to create, but you can also use the H5P WordPress plugin. Or, you can take advantage of the power and ease of use of Moodle.

Hacking BookStack

October 11, 2023 / Troy / 0 Comments

I’m a big fan of open-source software. One that I’ve implemented in a couple of different places now is BookStack. BookStack is an open-source wiki platform. BooksStack is also very flexible.

However, we use formalized outlines. There is a desire to have a traditional outline:

Roman Upper Case (I.)
1. Alpha Upper Case (A.)
  1. Numeric (1.)
    1. Alpha Lower Case (a.)
      1. Roman Lower case (i.)
        However, Markdown doesn’t follow that structure by default. Alas, neither does BookStack.

Traditionally, Markdown doesn’t really “do” the traditional outline. I like to write in Markdown, and BookStack supports Markdown.

One of the beauties of open-source software is usually flexibility.

BookStack does include a way to customize your text and entries. Head over to Settings, Customization. Scroll down to “Custom Head HTML Content”

Here you can add some CSS to style your pages as you wish.

First of all, I wanted to change the font. This is pretty straightforward.

<link href="https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Serif" rel="stylesheet">
<style>
h1, h2, h3, h4, body, button, input, select, label, textarea {
  font-family: "Noto Serif", serif; font-size:1.2em; color: black; </style>
<style>
.page-content h1 { font-size: 2rem; }
.page-content h2 { font-size: 1.8rem; }
.page-content h3 { font-size: 1.6rem; }
.page-content h4 { font-size: 1.4rem; }
.page-content h5 { font-size: 1.3rem; }
.page-content h6 { font-size: 1.15rem; }
</style>

This sets the font to “Noto”, which is a serif Google Font. By including elements (h1,h2…), everything will be in the Noto font

The bottom section controls the header size, with each level being a bit smaller than the preceding level.

Great so far. But what about the outline?

To structure the outline, I added the following:

<link href="https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Serif" rel="stylesheet">
<style>
h1, h2, h3, h4, body, button, input, select, label, textarea {
  font-family: "Noto Serif", serif; font-size:1.2em; color: black;
}
.CodeMirror, pre, #markdown-editor-input, .editor-toolbar, .code-base {
  font-family: monospace;
}
    ol {
       list-style: upper-roman; style="margin-bottom: 40px;margin-right: 40px;"
      } 
    ol > li >ol {
       list-style: upper-alpha; style="margin-bottom: 40px;margin-right: 40px;"
    }
    ol > li > ol > li > ol {
       list-style: decimal ; style="margin-bottom: 100px;margin-right: 40px;"
    }
    ol > li > ol > li > ol  li > ol {
       list-style: lower-alpha ; style="margin-bottom: 40px;margin-right: 40px;"
      }
    ol > li > ol > li > ol > li > ol  li > ol {
       list-style: lower-roman ; style="margin-bottom: 40px;margin-right: 40px;"
      }
</style>
<style>
.page-content h1 { font-size: 2rem; }
.page-content h2 { font-size: 1.8rem; }
.page-content h3 { font-size: 1.6rem; }
.page-content h4 { font-size: 1.4rem; }
.page-content h5 { font-size: 1.3rem; }
.page-content h6 { font-size: 1.15rem; }
</style>

This adds the outline (in Markdown, the ordered list) that I need.

Looking better, but…

The lines are too close together. There is no visual break between each element.

Back to Customizing.

I add:

li {
margin: 1em 0;
}

to each ordered outline. This creates visual space between each item. So, my customization now looks like this:

<link href="https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Serif" rel="stylesheet">
<style>
h1, h2, h3, h4, body, button, input, select, label, textarea {
  font-family: "Noto Serif", serif; font-size:1.2em; color: black;
}
.CodeMirror, pre, #markdown-editor-input, .editor-toolbar, .code-base {
  font-family: monospace;
}
    ol {
       list-style: upper-roman; style="margin-bottom: 40px;margin-right: 40px;"
      } 
      li {
        margin: 1em 0;
        }
    ol > li >ol {
       list-style: upper-alpha; style="margin-bottom: 40px;margin-right: 40px;"
    }
      li {
        margin: 1em 0;
        }
    ol > li > ol > li > ol {
       list-style: decimal ; style="margin-bottom: 100px;margin-right: 40px;"
    }
      li {
        margin: 1em 0;
        }
    ol > li > ol > li > ol  li > ol {
       list-style: lower-alpha ; style="margin-bottom: 40px;margin-right: 40px;"
      }
      li {
        margin: 1em 0;
        }
    ol > li > ol > li > ol > li > ol  li > ol {
       list-style: lower-roman ; style="margin-bottom: 40px;margin-right: 40px;"
      }
      li {
        margin: 1em 0;
        }
</style>
<style>
.page-content h1 { font-size: 2rem; }
.page-content h2 { font-size: 1.8rem; }
.page-content h3 { font-size: 1.6rem; }
.page-content h4 { font-size: 1.4rem; }
.page-content h5 { font-size: 1.3rem; }
.page-content h6 { font-size: 1.15rem; }
</style>

This is looking better. I may have more work to do, but I’m happy with the results so far.

Darktable

September 23, 2023 / Troy / 0 Comments

I’m a big fan of open-source software. One of the open-source projects that I like a ton is Darktable. Darktable is basically an open-source replacement for Adobe Lightroom. Darktable is very powerful.

I’m still learning the process of good photo editing. There are lots of support documentation and Youtube videos on using Darktable, but I’m still looking to find a really good, basic photo editing class/tutorial.

Recently, I found an issue with Darktable not fully displaying menu popouts. However, since this is open-source, there are lots of supportive folks out there. I found that someone else was also having that issue. They had a fix.

A quick download, and, uh-oh, it won’t open. Again, there is a lot of support. The fix is to allow the application in Apple’s Quarantine list. So, open the Terminal, and paste the following;

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/darktable.app

Now I’m all set. Darktable once again displays full popout menus. I don’t have to pony up my $10-$50 per month to Adobe.

An introduction to BookStack page. This shows an example of BookStack with the explanation of What is BookStack? The text is nonsense.

Other Software

January 11, 2023 / Troy / 0 Comments

Recently, I posted on the software that I use. I know that I left some valuable resources out. It’s funny how you can use something tons and then not even really think about it when asked.

In some conversations, I realized that I had left out at least one resource that I really like. I’ve received lots of praise for implementing this one. It replaces expensive software that doesn’t work as well.

BookStack – This is wiki software that you can host. It is free and open source. It produces a beautiful site. I use this for documentation sites. (In my job, documentation is undervalued but crucial.) Lots of customization options. Lots of controls. It also supports Markdown (though I leave it at the default of WYSIWYG for others.)

Just thought that I’d add it to the list.

Open Source in Education

June 8, 2020 / Troy / 0 Comments

Why now?

New York is looking to Bill Gates to “reimagine” education. Obviously, Bill Gates has been successful in some of their endeavors. Bill Gates is one of the richest men (note: not people, men) in the world. Mr. Gates has done some great humanitarian work.

However, he has does not successful track record in education. In fact, Bill Gates has already tried to “save” education with completely unsuccessful results. According to Business Insider, his initiatives did more harm than good. Now, on one hand, there is nothing wrong with failure. We should actually celebrate failure that leads to learning. However, this is a case where Mr. Gates does not have the background, he has money. He also seems to be well meaning. However, education is far more complex than most people understand.

Cuomo, who does provide really good press conferences on the COVID-19 situation in New York, doesn’t have a great track record on education.

Our driving force really ought to be what is good for kids. Bottom line. We should not be trying to win the news cycle. We should not be trying to make ourselves “look good”. We should be doing what is best for kids. That gets lost far too often.

Experience Right Now

Lots of teachers were suddenly forced to provide learning online. Those teachers did a fantastic job. Many teachers have great experience in pedagogy, strategies, and resources in face to face instruction. However, many fewer have developed those same skills for using technology. Understanding technology use in education is a different thought process. The issue is, one needs to understand the educational process and technology. Truly understanding the educational process is key. Education is very different than a for profit business.

Companies made their products free. That period of “free” is now ending. Many of these companies now hope that teachers, schools and districts will start paying for their product. (This is why they developed and offered the product/service in the first place.) Many teachers adopted tools that were “popular” or shiny. After all, they needed to pick something quickly.

Why Open Source?

Educators need to start “steering the ship” in developing and implementing technology in education. Instead of trying to adopt the perspective and development of the venture capitalists, educators need to start developing things that will work for students and teachers. Open source is a great way to do that. Open source allows for educators to provide feedback. Open source allows for a continual development and improvement cycle.

Of course, this is not a short, quick process. Developing OER (Open Education Resources) and open source takes time, vision and leadership. The current employment cycle of a Superintendent is 5-6 years. Superintendents are frequently looking for “quick wins”. Companies are usually very good at catching the PR cycle. (Unfortunately, rarely do we ever do long term follow up. Plus, no one wants to have made a “bad” decision. So we end up with a cycle of everything is great and wonderful.

Again, unfortunately, this doesn’t really help kids.

Roadblocks

There are several roadblocks. First and foremost, this would take true leadership and vision. This means vision in terms of curriculum and processes. Superintendents tend to have a pretty short employment cycle. Superintendents have to consistently respond to the “now”.

Michigan has gone through somewhat of a similar process. The State of Michigan declared the #GoOpen movement. The #GoOpen movement is adoption of Open Education Resources (OER). The State also invested in the creation of social studies resources. Despite some early criticism, the nature of

Local Control is another mitigating factor. Open source could be developed at the state level and districts could adapt and adopt from there. In the beginning though, the choices would be limited. It would take quite a while to develop options for a wide variety of school districts.

Investment

I like to say that we are constantly investing in someone. Either we invest in ourselves, or we invest in someone else. It is frequently easier to invest in someone else. At least in the short term.

Investment in ourselves is hard. There would be some fits at the beginning. However, with vision, once some of these projects take off, the effectiveness of our curriculum could skyrocket. Additionally, schools could be saving a serious amount of money. (This would be harder for all to see though. It is much easier for the salespeople to come in and explain how much money you’ll be saving with their product. Frequently, these savings come from “creative” accounting.)

Free vs Free vs Paid

December 27, 2018 / Troy / 1 Comment

Everyone wants something for free. But what really is free? In terms of web sites, information and more on the internet, free seems to be the standard. Like the old adage, there is no free lunch, things are really aren’t free on the internet. There are costs to host and produce web sites.

Let’s take a look at how this impacts us as educators. Here is a look at Free vs Free vs Paid.

Free (We’ll make money somehow)

The first free is sites or applications which look like they are completely free. These are usually supported by ads, a Freemium model or a “future revenue model”. Let’s take a look at each of these:

Ad Supported

Here, ads are sold to pay the bills. This is generally pretty straight forward. This somewhat follows the old TV model. For decades, TV was free because the producers and deliverers of TV sold advertising space. Your half hour show was actually about 22 minutes of content and 8 minutes of advertising. Advertising was an effective way to create desire and thus sales.

However, please note that advertising has changed. With the internet, tracking and coordination of information is possible. Thus, advertisers may get more information than we understand and expect. Facebook is the poster child for how this information can be used. There is a lot of discussion around information security. This can be a complex subject. Certainly though, we know that information is being used to ever more effectively to manipulate us (similar to how advertisers have always done).

Freemium

Here, free sites are supported by those willing to pay for extra features. These extra features can come in a wide range of products. One general example of freemium products tend to be casual games. These can generally be played for free, but there are real advantages to paying to “level up” or purchase in game clothing.

How about an educational example? Edmodo followed a freemium model for a while (more about that in a minute). Edmodo was (and is) free to use. They decided to “skip the bureaucracy” and market directly to teachers (this is a pretty common marketing tactic). Their hope was that the teachers would then pressure the districts to pay to adopt the platform. That didn’t work out so well, so they also implemented a marketplace. The Marketplace offered additional features and professional development at a cost. One of those products was “Snapshot”. This promised district level administrators a “real time” look into how Edmodo was being used. They also offered individual teachers a variety of tools that could be purchased for roughly $10 per year per class.

However, neither of those methods seemed to have worked out. Thus, Edmodo took the next popular option: selling themselves. Currently, Edmodo is owned by the Chinese gaming company NetDragon. (Hm, why would a Chinese gaming company want a Learning Management System focused on the K – 12 marketplace? Could it be that they have an interest in the demographics and data about those users?).

Future Revenue

Finally, many companies want to develop a really large user base. Once they have that large user base, they will “figure out” how to monetize those users. This is largely the model that Twitter followed. Some of these will end up turning to Ad base revenue, some will sell out (literally).

Class Dojo is an interesting example here. Class Dojo is owned by a private company (Class Twist). Thus, their financials are not publicly available. However, there are estimates available. Estimates are revenue of $880,000 per year. Their last funding round was for $21 million dollars. At some point, those investors will expect to get more money than they invested. Class Dojo has recently announced that they will sell the service to parents to be used at home. (*Personally, I’m doubtful that this will produce enough revenue to support the company). Parent payment certainly hasn’t worked out for another K-12 darling: Remind. Remind has struggled to hit upon a revenue model that will pay the bills and return the investment from investors. Remind tried “Activities” which provided permission slip services and payments with a cut of every transaction going to Remind. They are now on their second method of monetization: premium services. Remind is leveraging their popularity with teachers to entice districts to pay for premium services. This is a familiar script. Provide a free version to teachers. Get lots teachers using the service. Then start charging districts for the service. (After all, there will be popular support for the districts to pay for the service.)

Free (Open Source or OER)

Open Source

Another “free” option is open source. In one sense, open source truly is free. But, it’s free as in “free like a puppy”. There will be costs associated with open source. Generally, one needs to host the software. Hosting can be done through paying for hosting space or equipment. There is also a cost in knowledge and knowing how to update the software.

Open source has many advantages. The software won’t “go away”. Once it is open source, it is available for others to develop or adapt. There is no on going costs for the actual software. There is the ability to change, modify or extend the software to meet your specific needs. Frequently, there is a community that develops and shares plug-ins, themes, features, etc. That community can be very helpful and passionate. You have the ability to own your data. Don’t underestimate the power of a passionate community. Open source also means that data portability is an option. If you want to move to another system, you can.

There is the possibility that it will stop being developed AND that no one else will continue developing the product.

Moodle is a great example of open source software. Any educator (or institution) can download and use Moodle. Moodle also has a revenue model. They recognize that not every district wants to run their own Moodle server. So Moodle partners with primary providers and receives a percentage of their revenue. That is some companies provide the servers and support to run Moodle and charge districts for that service. Moodle also has a particularly passionate community that extends Moodle even further. Moodle has been around for almost two decades now. The future of Moodle looks very bright as well.

OER

A quick word about OER (Open Educational Resources). These are generally resources (right there in the name) as opposed to services. OER frequently comes from teachers and artists creating resources for their own use. OER can also come from the Public Domain. OER can also come from individuals being paid to produce the work for another purpose and shared.

Paid

This one is the most straight forward. You pay a price and receive a product. Paid products mean that as long as you pay, you have access. This is a very traditional model and easy to understand. One thing to be aware of though is “introductory pricing”. With “introductory pricing”, a “low” fee is charged in order to get the customer to buy in. Once that pricing period ends, the fees generally sky rocket. This can mean the loss of data, resources and skills. Thus, sometimes, paid products can be even more costly than one realizes.

Paid products generally have really good sales team support. A good sales team will be able to highlight the advantages (and ignore the disadvantages) of their product.

There are lots of examples of paid products. Take a look at Pearson’s many, many offerings. There are lots of curriculum offerings that make sense.

Canvas as an example of “introductory pricing”. Canvas traditionally offers a three year contract at “low cost”. Once that three year period is up, the cost goes up. (The idea here is that is expensive to change once you have committed to them). Canvas has never broken even much less made a profit. Canvas makes the claim that “large losses now mean large profits later”. At one point, for every $1 in revenue, they spent .63¢ in sales and marketing.

Right Choice

Which is the right choice for educators? Any of the above. Different situations call for different solutions. In some cases, the paid version is absolutely the correct choice. Pay the price, get the service. In some cases, free (open source) is absolutely the correct choice. (I’m a believer in open source software. I truly believe that if educators would work together a bit more, this could be an even more powerful option). I’ve also written previously about being thoughtful about investing (Invest In…) Sometimes, the free (we’ll make money somehow) is the correct choice (though I worry most about this one). I worry because educators frequently fall into this one. After all, who doesn’t want free?

All of these need to be consciously decided upon. Educators need to understand the bigger picture and the WHY of choosing one over the other. We need to be sophisticated consumers.

Manipulation of Facebook information the tip of the iceberg (http://www.arabnews.com/node/1283526)
Things You Need to Know About Facebook and Mass Manipulation (https://hackernoon.com/things-you-need-to-know-about-facebook-and-mass-manipulation-bed5c92806f1)
Online Manipulation: All The Ways You’re Currently Being Deceived (https://conversionxl.com/blog/online-manipulation-all-the-ways-youre-currently-being-deceived/)
Edmodo: Using freemium to disintermediate the education procurement process (https://www.hbs.edu/openforum/openforum.hbs.org/goto/challenge/understand-digital-transformation-of-business/edmodo-using-freemium-to-disintermediate-the-education-procurement-process.html)
Chinese Gaming Giant NetDragon Acquires Edmodo for $137 Million (https://marketbrief.edweek.org/marketplace-k-12/chinese-gaming-giant-netdragon-acquires-edmodo-137-million/#annotations:LgOCDj5IEei1OcN5w34yzQ)
Class Twist Financials (http://www.buzzfile.com/business/Classdojo-650-646-8235)
Remind revenue (https://digit.hbs.org/submission/remind-creating-and-monetizing-an-edtech-platform/)
Moodle (https://moodle.org/)
Canvas financials (https://ir.instructure.com/investors/news/news-details/2018/Instructure-Reports-Third-Quarter-2018-Financial-Results/)

An Open Letter to the Michigan State Board of Education

November 18, 2018 / Troy / 0 Comments

It’s time for Michigan to invest in the wonderful teachers, educators and support staff of Michigan public schools. One way to do this is to fully commit to supporting the implementation and development of open source throughout the state. Let the state be a leader to provide excellent resources to all of the districts.

Michigan has a goal of being a Top 10 in 10 state. Several of the touch strategic goals could be addressed or further assisted by the adoption of open source options.

The State has actually kind of begun the process. Michigan has committed to become an OER (Open Educational Resources) state. The Michigan OER site is now open. Michigan has started to develop some OER textbooks. This is a good start. But, there is so much more to do. We can go way deeper than materials.

First of all, Michigan needs to make educators aware of the power of OER. There also needs to be a real PR campaign to get teachers involved.

Michigan could do so much more to help the educational process. (This would end up impacting the kids, the very reason that we do the tough work that we do). If Michigan were to commit to using Open Source resources where it makes sense, so much good could be done. There could be so much collaboration around the state. There could be long term planning and work that is meaningful.

There are a couple of challenges faced by educators and districts across the state. One of those challenges is the “shiny object” challenge. As humans, we are generally attracted to “shiny objects”. In technology, this ends up being played out in terms of teachers and other educators chasing the new, heavily PR’d technology movement of the day. This is not being critical of educators, rather this is an acknowledgement of the real world. However, our kids don’t need the latest shiny thing, they need real education.

Real education takes real work. Sorry, but there is no easy, substantive, game changing, student effective magic bullet out there. Real education is messy and hard. It takes work. Real work. Real education takes time, talent, effort and understanding.

Michigan could help by supporting open source software. Districts have many similar needs. By supporting the implementation and development of open source projects, Michigan could reduce friction, free up resources, and increase support across the state.

Michigan provides some terrific support for teachers to continue learning through EduPaths. EduPaths is built on a commercial provider’s system. This is a commercial provider who has never actually made a profit*. They are somewhat famous for offering a great three year deal on their product. After the three years, the cost skyrockets. This leads many educational institutions to drop that provider and move to something else. Thus, this leads to investing in someone else instead of investing in ourselves.

Rather, I would like to see Michigan take a longer view and invest. Invest in the kids. Invest in the teachers. Invest in the Technology Directors.

So what are those investments in open source resources? Well, let’s start with a few suggestions.

WordPress. Every district in Michigan needs to meet ADA requirements for web sites. By implementing WordPress, Michigan could help create a network of support for districts.

Moodle. This is a powerful LMS (Learning Management System) that has incredible power to fundamentally change (update) how teachers provide educational experiences for students.
Mahara. Student portfolios. Put the students in charge of their own learning. These can be exported by the student for their own use.

Joget. This provides powerful workflows. This could be used for approval processes that are online (saving time, money and effort) with full accountability.

There’s more open source out there for us to evaluate and discuss. The good news is that Michigan has a terrific organization that they could tap for help. MAEDS runs a great conference. Technology Directors from around the state get together to discuss challenges and solutions.

This is not my first time to challenge the State to invest in us instead of investing in others. I’ve written about this before. This time though, I’m challenging the State Board of Education.

* Instracture Financial Results – For the full year ending December 31, 2018, Instructure expects revenue of approximately $204.5 million to $209.5 million, as compared to previously stated guidance of $203.5 million to $209.5 million, non-GAAP net loss of ($32.0) million to ($30.0) million, up from ($32.3) million to ($30.3) million, and non-GAAP net loss per common share of ($0.94) to ($0.88), up from ($1.03) to ($0.97).

#GoOpen

May 8, 2018 / Troy

Michigan, like several other states, is adopting the #GoOpen movement. Michigan is planning on rolling out their #GoOpen site in June of 2018.
I think that this is great news. I’ve long been an open source advocate. I believe that you are investing in yourself or investing in someone else. Teachers have long created a wide variety of materials. Many of these excellent materials could be shared and utilized across the state (nation, world).

Challenge

Quite frankly, I’d like to call on Michigan to really #GoOpen. Let’s have school districts across Michigan utilize open source and share those resources. Let’s see Michigan start developing (or coordinating the sharing from districts) of a wide variety of open source projects.
Most school districts have similar concerns. We have similar needs. Let’s start with some curriculum resources. Michigan is doing that with the development of Michigan #GoOpen hub on OER Commons (or see OER Commons).

Kudos

This is a great start (at least it will be when unveiled in June of 2018). But why stop there? Why not work with great educators around the state (and maybe even some college students who are studying programming at some of our fine colleges) to develop resources for teachers? For example, many students learning programming need a real world project to help them learn and refine their skills. Why not take some of the open source projects and specifically adapt them for educational use in Michigan?
Michigan has adopted the Ed-Fi platform for sharing information. According to what I’ve been told, this has resulted in improvements and sharing between Michigan and at least one other state.
Michigan has also developed some textbooks that are OER. The Michigan Open Book Project is great. This project has created some good social studies materials.
However, Michigan chose not to use open source software to provide professional development (instead going with a vendor who gave them a “great deal” for a couple of years – a vendor that has a history of losing money to gain customers).
Anyone who reads this knows that I’m a big supporter of Moodle. It’s open source, free and can be pretty and effective.
However, there really are a lot more open source options that Michigan could lead the way on implementing.

Options

Here is a quick list of open source software that I’ve used:

Moodle– powerful, efficient, pretty learning management system.
WordPress – powers about 30% of the web. Give every teacher the power of a blog.
Anki – powerful, intelligent flashcards. A great tool that supports retrieval practice (spaced retrieval).
LimeSurvey – survey software
Scribus – desktop publishing. Schools need to do a variety of desktop publishing. Some of these revolve around security.
Linux – operating system. Lots of tools.
OpenBoard – Interactive whiteboard software. Can be used with a variety of interactive projectors/boards.
H5P – creates interactive tools to use within Moodle.
GIMP – Image manipulation. This is powerful, but training is important.
Mahara – ePortfolio solution. We have ours integrate with Moodle for a wonderful user experience for students. Imagine students being able to create portfolios and “take them with them”.
Pressbooks – create books that can be shared and repuposed.
Hypothes.is– annotate the web. Also bookmark and share the web.
VUE – mindmapping and non-linear presentation software.
Blender – 3D creation suite. Give students the power to create.
OpenShot Video Editor – video editor.
Minetest – game creation engine (developed in conjunction with MineCraft).

Potential Projects

Just about every school district will have some needs that open source software can help address. Things like HelpDesk software and approval processes. Michigan could lead the way in coordinating options for schools. This could be high leverage, low cost for Michigan.

Final Thoughts

I’m sure that I’ve missed some software that I use frequently. Not every school district would want to implement that same options. Different schools have different needs. However, our needs are close enough that opening up these options and creating these resources could open up a great wealth of money for schools to use in other ways.
Come on Michigan, Let’s Truly #GoOpen!

Hypothesis

April 4, 2018 / Troy / 2 Comments

I’ve been playing around with Hypothes.is lately. Partly, this is because I was using the free version of Diigo, but ran into some limits. I have a couple of different groups that I created in Diigo. I went to add a fourth person to one of the groups and discovered that I had tripped over the free account restrictions. Being over the limit (didn’t really know this limit was coming), meant that one of the people that I wanted to collaborate with couldn’t be involved.

Now, it’s only fair that for profit companies make money. But it is also up to each one of us to determine the value and worth of each opportunity that we have. I like Diigo. It is a good service. It allows for bookmarking that isn’t tied to a single browser. It allows one to share bookmarks with a group (but, apparently there are limits on that one).

So, I started looking around for alternatives. I love open source software. Partly, this is because it is usually maintained by someone who has a specific need.

My research led me to Hypothes.is. Hypothes.is is slightly different from Diigo, but really fits a need for me. It still allows me to create groups. It allows me to bookmark sites and share those. It also allows me to Annotate web pages (this is actually the main purpose of Hypothes.is).

We’re a nonprofit on a mission to bring an open conversation over the whole web. Use Hypothesis right now to hold discussions, read socially, organize your research, and take personal notes.

I added the Hypothes.is extension into Google Chrome. One of the nice things about the extension is that you have to turn it on per page. It is not always running until you turn it on. In Safari, or FireFox, it is a bookmarklet. Either way, it is easy to use. One click and it is ready to go. (This also works very smoothly on an iPad, Chromebook, heck, it even works on my phone).

The workflow goes like this.

Turn on the Extension (or bookmarklet, depending on the browser that I’m currently using).
Select the group that I’m bookmarking to in tool bar in the top right hand side of the page.
Highlight the title of the page (usually) and click on the little Highlight button that pops up.
Click on the edit button (a pencil icon) in the Annotation and add a tag (I tend to tag just about everything). This way, I can find things quickly later. Click the Post button so that the others can see my notes. (You can also post only to yourself).

There are just a couple of current shortcomings.

There seems to be no way to remove someone from a group that you’ve created. It is easy enough to add people. I’m just concerned that someone could join a group and then turn out to be a “bad actor” (yep, I’ve been on the Internet for a while now).
There are no settings to receive an email when others in the group have bookmarked or annotated items. (The only notification is when “someone replies to one of my annotations”).

That’s it. I really like Hypothes.is. I’m not sure if they will heed my call for the two improvements for my use case, but I hope so. Check out Hypothes.is and let me know if you like it too.

OER Returns

February 28, 2016 / Troy / 0 Comments

OER (Open Educational Resources) is in the news again. The United States Education Department has launched a campaign to encourage schools, districts and states to Go Open (actually, it’s #GoOpen, thus further acknowledging that everything must have a hashtag). The GoOpen movement is being touted by the The United States Education Department as a way to “ensure that high quality resources created through our public funds are shared with the public”. The underlying idea is to provide high quality materials for all students. This movement is directly connected to materials that are created through grants from The United States Education Department.

Andrew Marcinek was hired as the first open educator adviser for the U.S. Education Department.

Additionally, a ten districts have taken up the #GoOpen challenge to replace at least one textbook with openly licensed educational resources within the next year. Additionally, there are Ambassador Districts which have committed to help more districts move to open resources.

I’ve written before about OER (Open Textbooks). In that post, I noted that the movement had begun a few years ago, but seemed to have died down. California has an Open Educational Resources Council, but California pivoted from PreK-12 to focus on Community Colleges. This happened in 2012. Utah similarly seemed to be pushing for open resources, but the latest post on their blog is from January of 2013. The Utah Open Textbook Calculator has moved off of the Utah Open Textbook site to the Open Ed group.

Michigan has supported open textbooks through the 22i TRIG program. Michigan has developed four social studies books. These books cover fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade and economics. There was quite a bit of controversy when they were first released. The books were criticized for grammatical issues and cultural bias. (There was very little follow up that I could find from WXYZ about the corrections made in the book).

The optimistic side of me is extremely pleased that we are focusing on open resources. As I’ve noted in other posts, I think that open resources could be extremely powerful and useful for schools. Open resources have the potential of providing better content at a lower cost. These could be customized and adapted for schools much more quickly and effectively than the textbooks that we traditionally purchased. Most of the textbooks that we purchased were targeted to the standards and expectation of Texas and California. Open textbooks could be tweaked to be much appropriate for states and districts around the country. As a middle school principal, we used textbooks that were older than the students. This was in large part due to the high cost of textbooks.

The pessimistic side of me is concerned that this will be the latest trend. Several schools, districts and states will “jump on board” with the OER movement. However, the hard work that is necessary to create, refine and implement OER will be missing. Some of those schools, districts and states will move on the next big thing before the true value of OER is realized. I’m also somewhat concerned that we won’t truly create open resources, but resources that are heavily dependent upon something else.

The President and First Lady have announced an initiative to provide ebooks for Title I schools and special education teachers. While this isn’t an Open Education Resource program, it is being billed in the same vein. The problem is that the resources aren’t open, most are private copyright enforced. Rather the resources are available only through an iOS app. So, the irony here is that the students who are identified as living in poverty (Title I), need an expensive device to access the free materials. It is better that this option exists than not, but I find the situation somewhat frustrating. (In full disclosure, I’m a really big proponent of the iOS eco system. I have a lot of Apple© products. I even bought Apple© stock long ago because I believed in the products.)

OER resources will remain a challenge. CK-12 is a leader in providing open resources. It is not an oversight that most of their materials are Math or Science. 3+4=7 can’t be copyrighted. Language arts becomes much more difficult. Copyright issues will continue to be a consideration when creating and using open textbooks. This is partly why the Department of Education announcement is crucial. It does mean that things created using Government grants must be open source. Most of the things that a government agency creates are open source. Thus, we get some great resources through NASA.

I truly hope that OER takes off. I hope that education will make the long term commitment to make OER an instrumental part of the educational process. I will work and support options that make that happen. But, let’s be clear. Creating resources is hard work. Making them easily available is a challenge as well. However, I believe in the many hard working, forward thinking, dedicated educators in America.